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2020 President · OR

SurveyMonkey · fieldwork ended 2020-10-26 (8 days before the election) · 3,543 respondents · Online Panel

The poll said

Democrat 59% · Republican 39%

D+20.0

The certified result

Democrat 56.45% · Republican 40.37%

D+16.1

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 59 − 39 = 20.00
  2. Actual margin = 56.453 − 40.367 = 16.086
  3. Signed miss = 20.00 − (16.086) = 3.914
  4. Absolute miss = |3.914| = 3.914

The poll overstated the Democrat by 3.9 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 72823, race ID 6248 (538 database).